Bill seeks to improve ballot measure process

February 05, 2009

PIERRE - People should be given more information when they are asked to sign petitions to put measures on the ballot, a South Dakota House committee decided Wednesday. Ballot measures backers now craft their own explanations of what a proposed law or constitutional amendment would do, making it easy for petition circulators to get people to sign petitions, said Rep. David Lust, R-Rapid City, the bill's main sponsor. HB1184 would require that petition circulators also give prospective signers an unbiased explanation of the proposal written by the state attorney general. Lust said out-of-state groups have used South Dakota as a testing ground for some of their proposed laws, and those groups sometimes do not accurately describe what their proposals would do. He criticized two defeated ballot measures, a 2006 proposal that would have allowed people to sue judges and a 2008 measure that purported to support open government. By The Associated Press